I believe that social media is the most effective tool for building your brand and business. That is true whether the brand is for business or is personal. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Linkedin have become commonplace in our culture and maybe the most popular forms of interaction today. In fact, Facebook has 1.5 billion monthly users. That’s one in five people on earth.
Job seeking has changed a lot over the past few years. Gone are the days of waiting for the Sunday newspaper to scour the job section for new opportunities. We have Monster, Ladders, Recruiter, ZipRecruiter and other dot coms which provide job listings and automatically deliver your resume electronically. So, do you need to use social media to find a new job? Does having a powerful personal brand give you an edge in the job market?
Let’s look at some statistics, courtesy of the study done by the Society for Human Resource Management: 57 percent of companies hired from LinkedIn, 19 percent hired from Facebook and 65 percent of companies used some form of social media to hire.
From the same study: Hiring managers thought it important for job seekers to have the following social media accounts: LinkedIn — 87 percent, Facebook 63 percent, Twitter 56 percent, and a blog 55 percent. The statistics tell us that if you are not using social media to help you find a job you are putting yourself at a huge disadvantage.
So here are my 12 social media tips to help you position yourself to stand out from the crowded job market and get hired fast:
- Complete social media accounts: Make sure you have accurate and up-to-date LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter profiles. Incomplete LinkedIn profiles will surely get you rejected from a job you are applying to.
- Match up your profiles: Make sure your resume and LinkedIn match exactly. The info on your Facebook and Twitter should never contradict anything on your resume or LinkedIn. Inconsistencies in your profiles are the number one reason to be rejected from a job.
- Professional profile pictures: What you look like matters. Get a professional photographer to take your headshot for LinkedIn. Use the same picture on Twitter. Never post a salacious profile picture on Facebook. Employers do look at your Facebook
- Facebook, keep it clean (Instagram & Twitter too): Hiring managers search all your social media including Facebook. A recent survey of hiring manger showed over 50 percent of candidates disqualified themselves from a job by something they posted. No bad language, defamatory or racist statements, salacious info or photos, complaining about the last job, whining or politics. Yes politics are a no-no. If your hiring manager is a Hillary supporter and you are posting “Make America Great Again”, you’re most likely done. And if you keep your Facebook private, they may choose the candidate whose Facebook is open and they can see what kind of person they are.
- English 101: Make sure you have used proper spelling, grammar and diction everywhere you post. One post of, “There party waz kool, lol” on your Facebook and you could be out. They will think someone else wrote your perfect resume. Facebook is where they think you think they aren’t looking.
- Search everyday: Search LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter every day for jobs. Join relevant groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. Search Twitter by company and hashtags. Some companies post jobs on Twitter before anywhere else.
- Connect a lot: Connect on Twitter and LinkedIn with people at companies you are looking to work for including hiring managers. Accept connection/follow request from all real people. You never know what a new connection will lead you to.
- Use industry speech: When you’re writing a resume, cover letter or LinkedIn profile, you need to use jargon from your industry. This is especially true if you’re hoping to be found by employers or recruiters on LinkedIn.
- Keywords: Companies use automated searches in resumes and LinkedIn so you need to peruse job descriptions for keywords and make sure they exactly match skills on your resume.
- Email address: Make sure your email address matches your name as closely as you can get. And no cutiepie1234@gmail.com addresses.
- Social media links: Place links to your social media in your email signature, resume and personal website.
- Blog It: Writing an article on a relevant topic to your desired jobs shows employers that you are serious and knowledgeable and can show off your communication skills. If you don’t have your own website/blog, LinkedIn Pulse is an easy place to place your writing and get lots of likes and comments and views from hiring managers.
You now know that 65 percent of employers hire from social media. So get social and get hired to the new job you have always wanted.
*By, Matt Sweetwood. Originally published in Entrepreneur Magazine. Republished with permission.
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